Progressive Rants and Raves

Archive for November, 2009

Ranting and Raving…

by admin on Nov.03, 2009, under Rants and Raves

This site is all about the rants and raves we all want to blow off steam about from time to time.  Whether its about a product or service, a crooked politician or the best fried chicken you’ve ever tasted, you’re likely to find something about it here.  Pull up a chair, get comfortable, and look around.  I’m betting you’ll find something something you’d like to rant or rave about.

I have special interests in classical choral music, home cooking, fine books, fine book aids and accessories, fine restaurants, movies, and the political process.

Frankly, I don’t believe Americans take their political institutions seriously enough.  I for one believe each of us should be engaged daily in building a better society by engaging one another in the “great debate”, not letting someone we elected to go to Washington or our state capitals do it all for us.   I suspect the spirits of our country’s forefathers would be agast at how little time and effort most of us spend crafting a nation our posterity can enjoy and be proud to call their own.

I also believe we don’t reach out enough to one another to compare notes, whether about politics, religion , the children, our favorite recipies, and how to live our lives to the fullest.

I have a lot of crazy ideas I’d like to discuss, including, to name but a few, the following:

Why don’t we make it illegal for elected and appointed officials to accept anything of value from anyone while serving in public office and for 10 years following such service?serving in such public office?  Then, perhaps our elected officials would be more interested in serving their electorate than in serving those who finance their relection campaigns.

Why don’t we pay for the re-election campaigns of our elected officials through funding with our tax dollars at an amount equal to 80% of the greatest sum raised by any challenger?  This simple change would free up about 70% of the time of our office holders to actually do the work of the people!

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Find a bank account free of charge in Germany for online banking

by johnniech on Nov.30, 2009, under Uncategorized

It is not so easy to find the right bank account free of charge on the Internet in Germany. The Internet banking suppliers have a lot of debit and credit interest rates and charges. The charges for checking accounts are dependent on monthly money influx and average account balance. It is possible to find a bank account for free, even if your monthly money receipt is small. There are cost-free comparison pages of German electronic banking suppliers.

Online banking offers you many important advantages:

You can find bank accounts with high interest rates for your deposits. This is important for everybody who does not want to give the money to the banking company for free. With Internet banking you have the opportunity to manage your checking account from everywhere you want. It does not matter if you are at home, at work or on vacation. Before choosing your German electronic banking supplier it is very useful to compare them. Such comparison can be conducted on the Internet: Kostenloses Girokonto Vergleichsrechner

Online banking suppliers can offer bank accounts for free because they have cost advantages compared to local physical banks with personal service. In the past German banks used to pay none or very small interest rates for savings on current accounts. But now there are better conditions available. The Internet is a great way to find the right online banking tools and services which exactly meet your personal needs, such as high interest rates for savings, low loan interest rates and free bank accounts.

Modern electronic banking suppliers offer easy to manage admin panels. Everybody should be able to use them after a short learning period. Money transfer can be done much quicker than by visiting your local bank and giving them a paper sheet with your cash transfer order. By using online banking you can save time and money. You will not have to drive to your local bank and there is no more waiting at the desk until the bank clerk has time for you.

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Online Stock Trading Tools

by johnniech on Nov.30, 2009, under Uncategorized

WD Gann spent 10 years researching the principles behind his stock and commodities trading methods. We have captured the essence of Gann’s trading method and explain it to you in a way that is easily understood. This material isn’t for everybody. To get the real benefit of trading the WD Gann’s Square of Nine you must take the time to learn the “personality” of the charts you trade. WD Gann used 100 year charts and he always knew where his tickers were on the Square of Nine in relation to every major high and low. Experiment with our online Square of Nine Calculator. It’s not necessary to duplicate Gann’s work ethic to trade the Square of Nine, but if you expect to dominate forex or the stock market after 10 minutes of effort then WD Gann is not for you. More info wd gann.

JM Hurst Cycle Trading digs deeply into Hurst’s 1970 stock market cycles book to pull out one simple and easy to use technique for forecasting the price and time termination point of market swings. This technique works in all markets and in any time frame. It can be easily and quickly implemented on any trading platform or in almost any charting program. Your trading assistant tells you when swing tops and bottoms will end in any time frame, and which side of the market you should be on. This magic trading technique is so easy to use in almost any trading platform that some people call it ethical cheating. We recommend our JM Hurst ebook to every stock, commodities or forex trader regardless of their primary method of technical analysis. More info j.m. hurst cycle trading.

The Elliott Wave Oscillator, or 5/34 Oscillator, is a 34 period simple moving average of prices subtracted from a 5 period simple moving average of prices displayed as a histogram above and below a zero line. You can duplicate the Elliott Wave Oscillator on charting programs with a MACD feature. It can be applied to any time frame (intraday, daily, etc.) and works equally as well in every time frame provided that the correct number of bars are displayed in the chart. More info elliott wave oscillator.

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Reciprocal Linking is Bad for Your Business Website Health

by johnniech on Nov.30, 2009, under Uncategorized

As small business owners, we need to find traffic for our websites from wherever we can get it — assuming, of course, that the source is relevant traffic. Irrelevant traffic actually HURTS your website rank in the search engines so we don’t want that. For that reason, we are not fans of reciprocal linking schemes, link farms, etc.

Case in point. I recently met with a new client in Los Angeles who needed to market their small business website. They had previously enjoyed a Page Rank of 5 for their website. Over the past two years, it has dropped to a Page Rank of 3. This was due to a number of factors, but chief among those was the fact that they had been forced into a reciprocal linking arrangement with an unscrupulous vendor. It benefited the vendor tremendously, as they were able to show the search engines that their site was being ranked to from a PR5 website; it made the vendor’s site more “buoyant” (it made it rank higher) in the search engines. The moral of the story is, be very careful if someone offers to do you the “favor” of creating a link to your site, in exchange to linking from yours. It could be detrimental to your website’s Search Engine health.

Nevertheless, you should look for opportunities to receive links from relevant websites whenever possible. It might not seem fair to “take” a link without giving one back, but there are other ways you can help the linking website. If they have a satellite website, you could consider linking to that in the body of one of your posts — relevant topic / contextual link / deep link to the satellite site. Just be careful that the link partner understands that directly linking from the satellite site to their main site will not be nearly as good as if they link in a broad circle of 10 sites before returning to the main site. This is somewhat sophisticated SEO / linking strategy that we’re sharing, so it’s not for everyone to implement on their own. It also implies that you have up to 10 web properties that are all somewhat related that can be daisy chained together… Again, not for everyone. But definitely for businesses that want to insure being on Page 1 on Google. ;)

It requires a lot of time, attention and planning to implement a 10-site daisy chain strategy, and we encourage you to go into that with plenty of forethought. Take the time to not only analyze and eliminate any chance of reciprocal linking or neighbor linking possibilities in the chain, and also insure that whomever in your organization will be managing your website network understands this strategy. A small business SEO Policy is a very smart investment in resources. It takes relatively little time for a website to fall in page rank, and a significantly greater amount of time to gain rank — especially after it is lost.

The underlying issue of Page Rank has been said to be overrated, and it’s largely a symbol of the site’s overall bouyancy in the search engines… it’s not necessarily a goal for a web owner to achieve a particular page rank; it’s more of a barometer or guideline than a definitive benchmark or landing point. The website owner with a page rank of 0 would certainly agree that a page rank of 5 would represent that his/her traffic has achieved more traffic (visitors), more conversions and more leads & sales. That’s really the benchmark we’re aiming for.

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Unique Job Ideas For Communications Major

by johnniech on Nov.29, 2009, under Uncategorized

Earning a degree in communications offers many different fields of possible employment. When you do a preliminary job search, it can look like there aren’t very many jobs for communications majors. After all, it is not like most areas of specialty where all the jobs are in the same thing. For example, if you major in business, you can find all the opportunities you like on a business jobs website. You have to be a little more clever if you choose communications as your major.

Jobs for communication majors depend heavily on your other skills and interests. Many communications majors, understandably, like to go in to advertising. If you have an advertising degree in addition to your communication major, there are a lot of doors open for you. You’ll be able to work in both traditional advertising and more novel types such as viral marketing. Your background in communications will make you more skilled in getting the contacts that you need to succeed in this field.

Most jobs for communication majors are related to public relations. Being a communications major almost guarantees you an interview with a public relations firm. After all, even fresh out of college they can assume that you are skilled at representing clients and spin doctoring whenever the situation calls for it. To be a shoe in for a good job, make that first impression count.

Of course, there are also jobs for communications majors in nonprofit industries. If you really want to use your communication skills to make the world a better place, this can be one of the most promising career fields for you. Businesses and organizations with non profit designation need communications employees just as much if not more than normal businesses. These types of jobs offer communication majors the satisfaction of a job well done in addition to helping people with a worthy cause. What could be better than that?

If none of these career ideas appeal to you, do not give up. A major in communications is a respected liberal arts degree that will open up many other venues for you. You could be a traffic coordinator, A retailer shipping manager, or really anything else you put your mind to. Majoring in communications opens up many doors, but it doesn’t close very many. With a little bit of imagination and a lot of hard work, the world is wide open to you.

My Real Views

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What you need to know about The NEBOSH Certificate course

by johnniech on Nov.29, 2009, under Uncategorized

After undertaking the NEBOSH Certificate training course
Candidates should be able to:

 

 

 

  • Understand the legal framework, moral & economic requirements & implications for good standards in health & safety within an organisation;
  • Develop, promote & communicate an effective health & safety culture in an organisation;
  • Identify the key features of a health & safety policy, the preparations & performance review of a health & safety audit. Understand the importance of proactive & reactive health & safety monitoring measures;
  • Identify hazards in the workplace & carry out risk assessments, record findings & review procedures;
  • Advise on strategies for controlling hazards, reducing risks & applying safe systems of work;
  • Identify fire hazards & consequential risks, advise on measures to minimise fire risks & develop fire procedures;
  • Identify ill health effects of physical processes of work & the environment & recommend suitable measures to combat risks;
  • Explain the processes & procedures for investigating & reporting accidents and incidents at work.

It provides a basic grounding in health & Safety essentials in the following areas:

  • Concepts of Health & Safety Law;
  • Policy;
  • Risk Assessment;
  • Accident Investigation & prevention;
  • Culture Monitoring;
  • Identification & Control of Hazards in a wide range of areas.

 

 

 

Duration: 10 days plus 1 day for exams. For open course dates at 19 UK locations scroll down.

NEBOSH Training is available for a number of other areas which give you a rang of other certified skills. Protect Life are a health, safety and protective goods superstore. They offer all the above and much more.

Good vendors of this type of training are hard to find. Perhaps the best approach when selecting a supplier is to approach the HSP (Health Safety and Protective) Superstores, they can usually sasitisfy all your health safety and protective training needs. They pridictably have 4 primary training services which we can be delivered locally, nationally or internationally:

  • Defining your needs – Help you to evaluate or review your training requirements and deliver a adaptable plan for training which is flexible enough to work in your organisation;
  • Planning – Help you to prepare and implement a clear and transparent plan which addresses training for all your health and safety needs ;
  • Deliver one-off or periodic training for one or more . With a number of our courses you have the option of training being delivered face to face, via video, via interactive computer based training or a combination of these methods;
  • Your training department – they will usually have a management department that can manage all your training requirements for you.

Remember HSP training does not have to be costly or restricted to any specific time . Some of our courses can be taken any time of the day and any day of the week. You can even stop the training and resume when the time is right for you.

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What is Green Energy anyway?

by johnniech on Nov.28, 2009, under Uncategorized

There are several categories of green energy. They are anaerobic digestion, wind power, geothermal power, hydro power on a small scale, biomass power, solar power and wave power. Waste incineration can even be a source of green energy.

Nuclear power plants claim that they produce green energy as well, though this source is fraught with controversy, as we all know. While nuclear energy may be sustainable, may be considered renewable and does not pollute the atmosphere while it is producing energy, its waste does pollute the biosphere as it is released.

The transport, mining and phases before and after production of nuclear energy does produce and release carbon dioxide and similar destructive greenhouse gases. When we read of green energy, therefore, we rarely see nuclear power included.

Those who support nuclear energy say that nuclear waste is not, in fact, released into our earths biosphere during its normal production cycle. They stress as well that the carbon dioxide that nuclear energy production releases is comparable, in terms of each kilowatt hour of electricity, to such sources of green energy as wind power.

As an example of the green energy production the average wind turbine, such as the one in Reading England, can produce enough energy daily to be the only energy source for 1000 households.

Many countries now offer household and commercial consumers to opt for total use of green energy. They do this one of two ways. Consumers can buy their electricity from a company that only uses renewable green energy technology, or they can buy from their general supplies such as the local utility company who then buys from green energy resources only as much of a supply as consumers pay for.

The latter is generally a more cost – efficient way of supplying a home or office with green energy, as the supplier can reap the economic benefits of a mass purchase. Green energy generally costs more per kilowatt hour than standard fossil fuel energy.

Consumers can also purchase green energy certificates, which are alternately referred to as green tags or green certificates. These are available in both Europe and the United States, and are the most convenient method for the average consumer to support green energy. More than 35 million European households and one million American households now buy these green energy certificates.

While green energy is a great step in the direction of keeping our environment healthy and our air as pollutant free as possible, it must be noted that no matter what the energy, it will negatively impact the environment to some extent.

Every energy source, green or otherwise, requires energy. The production of this energy will create pollution during its manufacture. Green energys impact is minimal, however.

More Info

Lets learn to life with not only each other but with our planet too.I design websites and pages to help those who are searching to find certain products Outdoor Wireless Security Camera

Is another one of our websites.Please go there to find out more about us and our programs.

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Where to Buy Your Organic Coffee

by johnniech on Nov.28, 2009, under Uncategorized

So you are interested in making the switch to the organic coffee bean and starting to drink organic coffee, but are not aware yet as to the different companies that are available out there and which you can turn to when you need to purchase your organic coffee selection. Fortunately, because of the great popularity of the decaf coffee these days, there are a lot of different organic coffee companies out there that you can check out.

Kicking Horse Coffee

There is the Kicking Horse Coffee Company for one, and they offer a 21-flavor portfolio of different organic coffees that you are sure to love. The coffee beans that they use are all certified organic, and so you know that you are getting completely organic coffee, and nothing but. They offer a grand selection of products to choose from including coffee and tea brewing equipment, coffee and tea accessories, and mugs. In addition, you can find these things from coffee wholesalers, just like if you were in the pork market, you would find pork wholesaler.

Their coffee is delicious and all grown organically, so you know just what you are getting and can trust in the Kicking Horse Coffee name.

Trees Organic Coffee and Roasting House

Or for your organic coffee you can go through this company, where you know that you are always going to get the very best selection. They were actually one of the first companies of its kind, and so you know that they have the experience and knowledge that you are looking for in a company like this.

They want to ensure that each and every customer is completely satisfied with their purchase, which is why they are standing by to help anyone out with whatever they may need. So if you ever have any questions or you want to make sure that you are getting certified organic coffees, you can contact them and they are more than glad to answer for you. In the same way, if you are looking for pork wholesale, you can contact a meat trading company such as VrcMeatMed.

As you can see there are lots of great companies that you can go through to find the organic coffee you are looking for, and it is all just a matter of finding one that suits your particular preferences. Once you do, you will quickly see that the organic coffees offer many benefits on their regularly grown coffee counterparts.

Making the switch to drinking organic coffees is a great idea, and not only are going to love the taste but you are also doing better for the environment by doing your part to stop the use of harmful chemicals for growing.  Organic coffee might be a bit more pricey but it’s definitely worth it.  You can find coffee and pork wholesale prices easily online.

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Designing Hand Painted Jewelry Boxes

by johnniech on Nov.28, 2009, under Uncategorized

A novel and private gift to give at vacations and important occasions is hand painted jewellery boxes.  It will be a rewarding experience for you as the creator of the present, as well as providing years of enjoyment for the receiver of the gift. 

Hand made gifts are truly 2 gifts in one package.  The 1st is definitely the physical gift, while the second is the thoughtfulness behind the actual creation of the present.  The gift can be specifically tailored to the tastes and interests of the receiver, making it truly a private expression.  Even for those who may not be particularly crafty or resourceful, painting a jewellery box can be a simple and fun project that has pretty results. 

The box itself can be purchased in rough form from a natural wood crafting store or from a craft store.  All of the development of the jewelry box will be complete, with only some light sanding needed before the painting can start.  Another alternative would be to scout around at yard sales, estate sales or perhaps Goodwill stores for old jewelry boxes that have unique traits or features and then turning them into pieces of art from your own hands.  Hand painted jewelry boxes can be simply transformed from used, tired accessories into new and thrilling gifts. 

you’ll say that you aren’t so great at creative painting, but even that aspect is no problem.  Craft stores and department stores will offer templates and stencils in numerous patterns that you can use to transfer pictures onto the jewelry box ; making it truly a completely unique item.  This is especially favourable when a certain theme is a favourite of the person who is to receive the gift ; animals, flowers, shapes, symmetrical figures or other sorts of patterns can be chosen to match the interests.  To finish the hand painted jewelry boxes fashioned in this manner, you’ll simply apply the paint to the preformatted picture.  Of course, if you want to exhibit your creative aptitude, you can always use freehand methods to color the box. 

Making hand painted jewelry boxes can be a considerate and unique gift that has special meaning to both the giver and the receiver.  It’ll take only a few hours of your time in making the gift, yet will offer years of delight and use for the person fortunate enough to receive it.

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Ideas For Kitchen Lighting

by johnniech on Nov.28, 2009, under Uncategorized

If you’re shopping for new kitchen lighting ideas, your community home improvement store will stock all varieties. Kitchen recessed lighting is the best known. They come in many different sizes and are extremely popular. The mini category is recognized to work extremely well in a kitchen environment.

Contemporary light fixtures are mostly smaller than classic style fixtures. It’s not that hard to install a light fixture in your kitchen. The center of the ceiling is the most universal place. Some people choose to add concentric rows of lighting for the more hip kitchen. Kitchen lighting must always be mounted at the correct level. This will prevent incorrect light angles.

One of the most used rooms in the home is the kitchen. Different activities in the kitchen need numerous kinds of lighting. The following are some kitchen lighting suggestions. When deciding on kitchen lighting ideas, the first kind of lighting you shoud think about is one that will provide sufficient light for kitchen tasks. Direct kitchen lighting is important no matter what you do in the kitchen.

Many people buy new light fixtures to improve the atmosphere and feel of their kitchen. Maybe you only want to hang around the kitchen area for a late night snack while chatting to somebody. The best lighting for this kind of situation is lighting that is soft and calming.

Using a variety of lighting fixtures is suggested if you use your kitchen for a variety of uses. You will want to create different lighting effects. There is simply no way for you to get all that you want with just one set of lighting fixtures. Combine numerous kinds of fixtures and lighting suggestions. Creating the perfect lighting can also be done by using switches and dimmers.

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